1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the detection and prediction of software performance shortages by monitoring performance parameters such as memory and storage usage, available CPU capacity, and the frequency of application processes.
2. Description of Prior Art
It is very important to provide professional software applications or computing systems, such as databases, with minimal maintenance requirements. Such maintenance often involves ensuring that the software is operating at acceptable levels of performance and efficiency, which requires monitoring the resources used by the software and supporting the software with at least a minimal amount of resources. If a resource becomes unavailable or depleted, such as where the resource is used by the software or is damaged, the corrective measures must be implemented by, for example, dynamically extending full storage devices. It is thus important to know when to implement such corrective measures.
Prior art methods of implementing such corrective measures include defining thresholds for certain performance parameters, where such thresholds may correspond to a performance parameter of an application or to the availability of one or more resources. For example, the performance parameters may correspond to a frequency of processes carried out by an application, a table space fill grade, available memory or storage, and CPU usage.
If a performance parameter exceeds its threshold an exception occurs and an administrator, such as a database administrator (DBA), is informed. Exemplary performance thresholds include 90% table space fill grade, 80% disc storage used, and the like. The upper thresholds are preferably defined such that the application provides full performance until one ore more performance parameters reach their thresholds. Within periodic time intervals, measurements are carried out to determine whether each of the performance parameters has exceeded its respective threshold.
Unfortunately, the prior art suffers from various problems and limitations. For example, by the time the system alerts the administrator to the need for corrective measures, a performance threshold has already been exceeded and it is likely that the system or application will operate at less than optimal levels between the time the administrator is notified and the time the administrator implements the corrective measures. Furthermore, preventing one or more of the performance parameters from reaching the thresholds requires the administrator to spend time monitoring the parameters.
Accordingly, there is a need for an improved method of ensuring optimal performance of a computer system that does not suffer from the problems and limitations of the prior art.